Opinion: Will Yale respect the heart of the university?
Dolores Colon
Yale University s Beinecke Rare Book LibraryFile photo
On Monday, my colleagues and I are planning to deliver a petition calling on Barbara Rockenbach, the Yale University librarian, to protect our jobs from subcontracting.
At the Yale University Library, where I’ve worked since 1992, my colleagues and I are responsible for 15 million print and electronic volumes, including one of the world’s most prized collections of rare books and manuscripts. Although Yale regards the library as “the heart of the university,” years of understaffing have created a backlog in our special collections, with materials inaccessible to students and researchers until they are cataloged.
“The firefighters were heroic, they were smashing away the wall between the two buildings, standing on the roof, doing their utmost to keep our building from the worst of the fire. We had to make fast calls. We had little time to scour the building and make decisions before the fire department entered and began the process of hosing it down.”
Sara de Beer describes the fire that almost burned down Cape Town’s A4 Arts Foundation in December 2020. The space housed irreplaceable work by artists from across southern Africa.
But what do you do when your precious archive of art and books is about to be destroyed?
Senior thesis ‘A Protest, Ongoing’ explores a tradition of student activism
Senior thesis ‘A Protest, Ongoing’ explores a tradition of student activism Selina Yang / Staff Photographer Audrey Oh, CC ’21, wrote her senior thesis on the history of Columbia’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. “A Protest, Ongoing” examines the “Origins and Historical Challenges of Columbia University’s Ethnic Studies,” particularly the 1996 student hunger strike that caused the University to establish the department.
“When I began this project, I expected to find something of the following: a revolutionary lineage of student activism culminating in a strike that was so impactful as to convince a dogmatic academic institution to change its long-set ways,” wrote Audrey Oh, CC ’21, as she reflected on her senior thesis project. “What I got is something much different.”
Pigafetta – Manila Bulletin mb.com.ph - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mb.com.ph Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.